


Refraction

by terriku



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen, Multi, Old Lore, like... the nebulous pile of hcs & the joj that formed all of league lore before actual lore existed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-06-12 06:43:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15334134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terriku/pseuds/terriku
Summary: Light, like all things, bends.Lux and the three most important people in her life.





	1. vanguard / precipice

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, I wrote a collection of drabbles titled ‘refraction’ trying to explore a character that I loved. Of course, like all writers, I had grand aspirations and a very certain end-point that I wanted to reach that I didn’t ever get to... I actually wrote the last lines of that set at the same time I published the first chapter. The newest lore update effectively killed the Lux that I loved for all those years, so this is my swansong to her – that deathly dark two-faced girl, full of secrets, longing, and resignation.

Lux wakes up in a bed she recognizes as her own, fingers curled into her blanket, old words unspoken in her mouth.

_Brother, brother, where are you?_

She unclenches her fingers one by one. She blinks once, twice, three times. She stares at the ceiling of a room she recognizes as her own.

She is waiting, waiting for the words to fade, waiting for sleep to claim her again.

 

 

In the morning, Lux wakes up and pulls her hair back from her face. She pulls on her clothing like the soldier that she is. She waits until her kettle begins whistling. She pours the water into her cup and watches as the tea leaves float up to the surface.

When she leaves the apartment she calls home, when the door clicks shut behind her, she realizes that she is still waiting.

But Demacia is waiting too, so Lux turns her key in the lock and walks down the stairs and out into the streets. She passes through open squares and manicured gardens, skirts past the wide-columned Royal Treasury and enters the military headquarters through a side-alley door. The secretaries smile back when she waves, no explanations needed, no identification shown. There is no one in the Demacian capitol that does not recognize the Lady of Light, the perfect little Lady Crownguard, daughter of lords, sister of the Commander of the Dauntless Vanguard himself.

She smiles at everyone that smiles at her, and even smiles at the people who don’t smile at her. She has a little wave for everyone, especially the newcomers who always seem to trip over their feet when they pass her. Their clean pressed military uniforms always look a little too starched. Lux remembers when she was like that too, younger, more eager, ready to die for bright ideals. All the while, Lux follows familiar hallways down into the bowels of the building, deeper, darker, until finally, she stands in front of a nondescript door in a nondescript hallway lit by nondescript flickering magic lamps.

The door opens without a creek and closes behind her without so much as a click.

The woman sitting at the desk is wearing an unspecific uniform. Her face is carefully schooled into the perfect unassuming mixture of nonchalance and boredom that Lux memorized when she was thirteen. It’s an expression she’s worn too, though rarely in Demacia, and rarely as Lux. Lux is too bright for boredom, too shining for nonchalance. After all, she is a shining beacon of Demacian virtues. Her smile is closed-lipped, soft, gently curving at the edges. There are other smiles too – open mouthed, gaping, lips curling cruelly – but she does not wear any of these. Not in this room, not in this place.

The woman sitting at the desk who any other person would label a secretary, looks up at Lux and then looks down back at her reports. She makes a small flick of her head to the right and says nothing else.

Lux understands.

She passes through another door into a room so sparsely furnished the only thing there is a table. A man is standing on the other side. Sconces light the room, but they seem to tremble with every small movement of the man’s body. He is looking down at papers that are deliberately organized. When Lux comes to a stop five inches from the edge of the table, he looks up at her.

There are, even now, no words to describe Command’s expression. Lux has known the man for half her life, served under him as a soldier, as a pawn, as a weapon, and still, she cannot even begin to guess his thoughts, let alone his feelings. If he has any, that is.

“Lux,” he says simply.

She smiles, enigmatic, tight-lipped, sharply.

She waits.

Command slides a manila envelope across the surface of the table. On his finger, prominently displayed, is a signet ring. It is iron, heavy, rough. The imperfections of the molding have been sanded away. It is no artisan’s piece that is for sure; it is a soldier’s piece, an identifier of sorts. The inlaid eagle that once represented the Demacian Navy glints gold when it catches the light.

Lux remembers it. She remembers the weight of it in her palm, the weight of it on a chain around her neck. She remembers each and every nick and imperfection on it. She remembers the places the gold leaf had flaked off and left the metal engraving beneath bare. She remembers clutching it in her hands, tightly, so tightly, deep in the labyrinth of Noxus, in the churning dark and dank of the sewers-

She takes the envelope.

She does not open it, does not peruse its contents, does not question Command. There is no point: Lux would do anything and everything asked of her. The act of asking is unnecessary. She takes it, accepts it, and bows her head a tad, and she exits the way she came. She does not say anything to the woman sitting at the desk.

She walks up the stairs, from below to above. She smiles at the people she passes in the hallway. She leaves the military headquarters and heads back to her apartment. Then, and only then, does she open the envelope. The mission briefing is brief and to the point. Succinct, almost. Reconnaissance, asset management, trimming unnecessary ends, warnings to be given, debts to be extracted; the usual. Enclosed are travel papers, a portrait of a girl no older than sixteen, three minimalist maps of a city, a manor, a colosseum, and a small memo in cipher that Lux knows without a doubt will list four safe houses. There’s a receipt too, for a pharmacist in the northern ward of the capitol, ostensibly for pain medication. This Lux tucks into her bag. She will pick up the concoction tomorrow, on her way out of the city. It will be clear, odorless, and if the gods are kind, painless. Lux doubts this, but so long as the odds are not zero, it is not impossible. She washes the dishes with scalding hot water and towels them dry. She strips herself like the soldier that she is, steps into her shower, and lathers her hair with something that smells almost like tar. When she steps out, she rubs the dye into her hair with practiced efficiency. She presses a hand to the fogged mirror, wipes, and pretends, for half a moment, that she does not recognize the face looking back at her.

She does. It is a face she has worn so many times before, a face that is her own in a way that the Lady Luxanna will never be. It is almost a secret, dark, unknown, tucked carefully into the confines of her heart.

Night settles on Demacia like a thick blanket. Lux sits in her bed and lies down beneath her covers. It’s autumn; the dog days of summer have passed and her blanket could stand to be a little bit thicker. Still, sleep comes easily enough.

 

 

Lux wakes up in a bed that is not her own. She combs dark hair out of her face and into a severe ponytail. She drinks cold water from a clay pitcher. She walks through gravel lined streets, past proud statues and towering gates. She stands in the shadow of one of hundreds of pillars that make up Basilich’s colosseum. She watches a girl, barely sixteen, recoil in shock from, presumably, some violent display of blood and gore. She stares at the ceiling, counts the seconds that pass in her head.

When that girl stumbles out into the empty corridor, Lux is there, a knife in her hand. It slips between the girl’s third and fourth rib with practiced ease. The girl’s eyes widen, and her breath leaves in a gasp barely louder than a sigh. The poison is fast, but not painless. Lux watches as the girl winces, as her body shudders and convulses, as her strength runs out of her body until she cannot even stand. She slumps forward into Lux’s waiting arms, and Lux lowers the girl to the ground without a sound and counts the beating of her slowing heart.

She pretends not to hear the words that leave the girl’s mouth, a boy’s name, tightly clenched, almost a prayer:

_Brother, where are you? I am afrai-_

She blinks, once, twice. She stares into the ceiling of the colosseum and closes her eyes.

She is waiting, waiting for the words to die, and the heart to stop.


	2. golden / hollow

The first time she sees Jarvan is at a military parade. She is young, young enough to be dazzled by the banners and trumpets. Of the parade, she remembers only this: clutching Garen’s hand too tight, her brother’s whisper in her ear, a boy in golden armor that seemed two sizes too large. He’s in the center of the column on a horse of pure black that makes the gold of his armor stand out starkly. Its impossible to look away from him – the shining warrior prince – and yet, Lux looks at him and sees her brother in armor too big for him, wearing at title to big for him. A boy crushed beneath the man he must become.

That image stays with her for a long time.

 

There is a blur of time when her Academy years intersected with her brother’s that she must have seen the prince. She knows this logically. Garen had been the top of his class, the pride of the Academy, earmarked for command already. And Jarvan, well, Jarvan was the crown prince. He stood out no matter where he went. Looking back, she imagines they must have been followed by a horde of girls and nobles and peers all eager to rub shoulders with the future of Demacia. But Lux does not remember this.

Instead, Lux remembers the loneliness. She remembers being a head shorter than everyone else. She remembers the glares and the whispers and the questions that followed her around. So young, and yet, already sent to soldier for Demacia.

She remembers curling in on herself, stifling sobs against her own fist. She remembers, unbidden, the desperate longing she had to see her brother.

Mother and Father had given her up; Garen alone had held her hand when the lights danced across the room. Garen alone had tucked her into his arms and promised: _No matter what, I will always be here for you little sister._

She does not remember Garen with his hair shorn short, his bright blue eyes matching his uniform. She does not remember Jarvan, dark hair skirting regulations, green eyes bright with mischief. In truth, she does not always remember the boy in the golden armor two sizes too large. She remembers, only, the sting of betrayal, the long burn of abandonment.

 _Brother_ , she thinks every night, _where are you? I am alone and I am afraid_.

And every night, without fail, Lux falls asleep curled in her regulation sheets with tears dried on her face and teeth marks on her hand. No one tucks her in. No one holds her hand. No one comes for her. In the end, the one who came for her in those dark days was not her beloved brother. It was Demacia.

Demacia came in the form of a man with eyes as sharp as steel who looked down at Lux as if she was a tool to be used. He had no name, only a title: Command. And with his own voice, he said only one thing to her and that was this: “When I speak, I speak as Demacia.”

 

Demacia came and said: “Come to me and I will make use of you.

Demacia did not say: “You will be as a weapon to our enemies, a shield to our people, a light to the world. We will make the world a better place.”

Demacia did not lie to her, not even then.

Demacia does not lie, even now, for lying is the providence of mortals and Demacia is eternal.

 

Lux is thirteen when she still cries in her dorm bed for her mother, her father, and, more than either put together, her brother.

Lux is fourteen when she listens to a man screaming and crying as a hot iron is pressed against his skin.

Lux is fifteen when she holds a dagger in her hands and cuts a man’s throat just as she’d been taught, quickly, deeply, quietly. She watches his lifeblood flow out in spurts and pretends she does not retch afterwards.

One night when Lux is sixteen, she sits at her parent’s table and eats a dinner served in six courses. When the soup arrives, her mother looks at her and says, “Oh Luxanna, how you’ve grown.”

What her mother means is this: There are gowns to be ordered, balls to be attended, nobles scions to be wooed. She’s not a girl anymore after all, but a woman grown. Lux nods her head. She’s not a girl anymore, and she wonders when she stopped being one. When she turned sixteen? When she first killed a man? When she first watched a man die? When she stopped crying in the dark? Or was it when she was first manifested her magic? Was it when she’d stopped being a girl and instead became a mage to be tamed and given in service to Demacia as a smith might surrender a sword?

She does not say this for Command has trained her well. Lux smiles her polite, sparkling smile, and she says “of course.” She will wear the dresses and attend the balls and speak to the noble scions and smile just enough. And all the while she will hold a knife in her heart and a scale in her mind. If she must charm the entirety of the Demacian nobility, then she will. Power is more than swords and magic after all.

 

Luxanna had grown up knowing that her parents were honored citizens. Her father had an illustrious military career with the Royal Guard and her mother was the daughter of a family whose noble lineage spanned at least ten generations and had produced enough senators to fill the senate hall thrice over. They were both citizens and held seats in the Council of Lords. This, she understood at a certain age, was a great privilege.

She doesn’t understand the enormity of that privilege until she is older. Until she is a student in the Academy and she sees and understands that she is a daughter of the Crownguard family when her classmates give her deference and disrespect in the same gesture. She is not one of them, she will never be one of them, she could never be one of them.

Under Command’s tutelage she understands this is both a boon and a bane. A boon, because she can walk freely in worlds and spheres that her peers can never dream of touching. A bane, because she is recognizable, and unlike a disguise, she cannot shed her birthright.

“That has its uses,” he says, “we will use that to our utmost. It isn’t very often that nobles end up here.”

Lux closes her eyes. She thinks of gowns and balls and six-course dinners and fake smiles. She understands that power is more than swords and magic but sometimes she wishes her world was just swords and magic and the right amount of pressure applied to the human body. That would be easier.

 

 

The first time she meets Jarvan, she is seventeen.

It is the first ball of the season and every single noble girl of eligible age had turned up at the Spiritmight’s ball because it was widely understood that the Crown Prince would be there to see his little cousins debut. The Lady Luxanna is no different, though her invitation was not wrangled but given. Delivered straight to High Silvermere by a Spiritmight steward. As the eldest and only daughter of House Crownguard, she is an honored guest and as such, she has the best vantage point to see Jarvan enter.

The Crown Prince looks older than her brother. His shoulders are no broader and yet they seem to be more weighed down. He’s taller than her brother, wearing a crisp military uniform that looks immaculate. There’s something about him – beyond his title, that is, - that commands the attention of the entire grand ballroom. Lux can almost hear every conversation snuff out as people turn to look at this prince of theirs.

He takes it in stride, without a single flinch of discomfort or vanity, nods in acknowledgement and makes his way to the hosts. As easily as that the conversation blooms again; fervent whispers and stolen glances at the prince and how _handsome_ he is. Or something along those lines. Lux is entirely capable of playing the part of a vapid highborn lady, equal parts petty scheming and charm, but she has never been good at engaging with their babble. The others can compare metaphors for the color of the prince's eyes; Lux names the ribbons he is wearing and files them away to cross check. Did he really earn that Silver Laurel, and for what? He's a bit young to be recognised for distinguished service isn't he? But Lux watches as he turns and navigates the conversations and people around him and she sees the martial lilt to his steps, the sharp way he turns on his heel, and all at once, she remembers the boy she saw all that time ago at a military parade. _He’s grown into his armor_ , she thinks. But there’s a weight in his eyes that makes her correct herself. _No, he’s outgrown it. He’s not an heir, he’s a king-in-waiting._

She does not dance with Jarvan at that ball. She does not even speak to him. She watches him, half because she should, and half because her eye is drawn to him whenever he moves. This annoys her because Command has trained her to be better. But Jarvan takes up space and he's magnetic in a way that makes her stomach churn. Lux has been Command's student long enough to know this is a great and dangerous trait in men who will be kings.  

The next day Command asks her about their crown prince. He wants to know all the ladies he danced with and all the ones he didn’t. He wants to know the names of all the people who spoke to him, and all the ones he sought out himself. And at the very end, he wants to know what she thinks.

Lux holds the dossier in her hands and she thinks, she thinks: _I understand. I understand where the weight in his eyes comes from._  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write a nice three-parter but I ended up splitting the second chapter because it got long and because I think Lux and her relationship with Jarvan can actually be split pretty cleanly down the middle of "before" and "after".


	3. crown / guarded

There’s something to be said of oddness reading a dossier.

First, it’s a massive invasion of privacy. Privacy is good. People should have privacy. And truthfully most people do. Could Lux use her skills and figure out what Mariam from the third floor does everyday? Could Lux, given time and resources, take apart Mariam like a clockwork doll and understand everything that makes her tick? Yes. But that’s clearly not the best use of her skills or the skills of the people in her unit, so Mariam from the third floor keeps her privacy.

Jarvan, on the other hand, has the distinct honor and misfortune of being the crown-prince of Demacia, son of the line of Lighshield and Spritimight, commander of the entirety of Demacia’s land forces. There are few better applications of Lux’s talents than to understand every last speck of his life, to know what makes him tick.

Secondly, reading a dossier is like taking eight liters of intimacy straight down the throat. A good dossier provides the reader with a detailed and thorough play-by-play of its subject’s entire life. It also leaves the reader with an understanding and awareness that usually comes only with time. What a man can spend twenty years learning about himself can easily be digested in an evening provided it comes in the form of a well curated report.

Lux has read his dossier thrice. Once, because it was her duty. Because Command had looked at her and her skills and decided the best use of her birthright was to keep her in Demacia and let her smile at all the noble scions and the second sons and even the third sons. Jarvan was never really a target in that way for her, though occasionally she did see the math in Command’s eyes, but he was _the_ asset. The single largest asset that presently existed in Demacia.

The second time Lux read his dossier is not because of her duty. It’s three months later, when the words won’t stop haunting her and the instant eight liters of intimacy sits heavy in her belly. It’s after the Spritimight’s ball and Lux scours every inch of that dossier and then almost vomits.

Intimacy on this level feels like a violation when they’ve never spoken at all.

 

Of all the places she thinks she might run into the prince – Senate, a ball, the Royal Gardens, the Treasury, the Command room, the wharfs – the dusty and forgotten cartographer’s library is one of the last.

And yet, there he is, gingerly holding a battered tome between his hands as if acutely aware of the fragile and brittle paper. This surprises her, mostly because in her experience, it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that nobles were aware of. Maybe for this reason she decides to leave the prince alone and not make use of what might be termed an “opportunity”. She means to silently enter, grab her books and maps, and leave without his notice.

Lux has been in Command’s hand for almost six years, molded and trained and beaten into shape. She moves with silence, but still, the prince catches her. He turns to look at her and there’s a sharpness to his gaze that cuts her straight to the bone. This is no polished noble, no purebred son; this is a warrior. For half a moment Lux thinks: _if he were no one’s son, they would still make him commander of the army._ (Which is, of course, ridiculous and she knows that logically, but still.)

It goes away after that and is replaced by something softer and more suited to a library. He smiles at her politely and goes back to his book.

Lady Luxanna should curtsy and greet his majesty.

Lady Luxanna should smile demurely and look at the prince from under her eyelashes.

Lady Luxanna should make the most of a private meeting that at least ten other noble girls would kill for. Alone! With the prince! In a library! Didn’t romance novels start that way?

Lux says nothing. She looks briefly at the title of his book and then turns to the book shelf to find what she came here for.

If her rudeness or her presence bothers him, he never shows it. Instead Lux continues to run into him. Not often, and not on a schedule. She assumes that his schedule, like hers, is rarely predictable and always somewhat in flux. And the truth is, if she wanted to engineer meetings she could. The prince’s entire life was mapped out and easily accessible to Control and, by extension, her. But Lux knew what it meant to carve moments of solitude from a demanding social existence. Outside of necessity, she’s more than happy to leave the prince to his quiet moments and dusty books.

 

It doesn’t occur to her until the third time the prince walks into the maritime stacks of the central library and looks directly at her once, and then away, that maybe the person who is doing the schedule-stalking isn’t her. There’s a rational part of her that tries to explain that, really, the person that is out of place here is her. What’s Lux doing in the maritime library besides indulging a few intellectual whims? The prince though is the man who will one day be commander of the navy. Since she never did ask for a look at his schedule, for all she knew, maybe this was a reoccurring event she’d stumbled upon.

Command always said, to truly understand, common sense had to first be discarded.

Lux knows that the world does not move in the arcs of common sense, she knows that there is no greater good or larger force guiding the events of the world. Still, in her daily life, she tries to take things at face value and not think too hard.

Common sense says this is all a coincidence.

Lux thinks that maybe the prince is smarter than Command thinks. Lux remembers the sharp edge of his gaze, something angry and honed, and she thinks that the prince is smarter than she thought too.

The fourth time she and the prince are both in that particular library, he leaves first. He doesn’t stop and greet her, but he does place the book he was reading on her desk. There’s a slight smile on his face, she thinks, amusement, as if he’d just saved her the trouble of having to find the book again.

And all this time, she’d thought herself the watcher, not the watched.

 

Command asks her to speak to the prince during the next ball. As a rule, Lux goes to more balls than the prince. This one will be hosted by the admiral’s wife and as such the members of the military will all wear their uniforms.

Not Lux.

Technically, she’s military, but she’ll be wearing a navy dress that was chosen for her months ago when Command asked for a wardrobe to be created. It’s not a military uniform, certainly not the white of the Dauntless Vanguard’s dress uniform, and there will be no medals pinned to her breast. Not that there are medals in her possession anyways: the place she occupies in the grand scheme of the Demacian military does not result in ribbons or medals or commendations.

So, Lux goes with her hair in a deceptively simple up-do, and in a navy dress when she’s seen more of Noxus and the Frejlord than any noble in a cleanly pressed uniform.

And she talks to the prince.

Demurely, and with grace enough to make half the noble girls turn red with envy. Or anger. She slots easily into his path and quietly captures his attention. Lux means to greet him first and introduce herself as if there is any possibility that the crown prince of Demacia is unaware of her lineage, but Jarvan beats her to it.

“Ah,” he says, “you must be Garen’s sister.”

Which she is. But the informality of that statement throws her off kilter, not entirely off balance, no. Lux had been trained too well for that, but off kilter. They are in formal dress both and at a formal ball surrounded by nobles in all their formal finery and the prince is greeting her not as another highborn lady but –

Like he’s _known_ her. Like they have a _personal_ relationship.

Lady Luxanna curtsies perfectly. The man on the prince’s left is discreetly looking at her breasts. Lux does not say anything; the prince has a twinkle in his eyes, clearly amused and probably aware. Lady Luxanna makes her greetings and Lux wonders how to quantify that twinkle in her reports.

All the while she smiles and compliments Jarvan’s companions on their uniforms and how dashing they look and listens to their exaggerated military stories. She listens to the man who was staring at her breasts expound on how he managed to defend an extremely insignificant town on the Noxian border and thinks the whole time: _And I was in High Command stealing the maps and correspondence of Swain from under his nose._

The prince smiles all through this, lazily and with such clear amusement Lux almost wants to punch him. But she is a lady and she smiles instead and then politely begs off to go dancing. And perhaps she leaves a little too quickly to be entirely proper, but she hasn’t really thought of a polite and proper way to avoid dancing with the breast ogler, so she forgives herself for that.

She walks the perimeter of the ball room once and then quietly slips away to the balcony from behind the shadow of a curtain. If all eyes were on her when she approached the prince, now no one saw her leave.

It is cool, cold almost, but a welcome coolness. There is a salt breeze from the ocean, and Lux can count the stars above and the lights below. In the darkness, with the only light streaming from inside the ballroom out like a faint tendril, Lux wonders what she’s doing here.

She is not surprised when someone else joins her. She does not look back but she does not need to. His steps are solid without being loud and his body radiates heat in the chill of night. He stands beside her and when he places his hands on the railing, she sees the glint of the Demacian signet ring on his hand. Jarvan does not say anything, but Lux knows it is him nonetheless. Her awareness heightened and her mind running through every single possible scenario or reason for him to be here, next to her. He's here, and she is not surprised that he is, only she does not understand _why_ and what had Command said? What had he said about the importance of knowing why?

And then, she says, suddenly: “I read your dossier.”

Suddenly is perhaps not entirely correct. The words do leave Lux’s mouth in a rush, but it is no spontaneous decision. It’s half calculation – he’s smart enough to know that she’s not just a noble lady, smart enough to know that he’s got watchers in every place, and smart enough to be at ease among the unmitigated stares of a dozen members of Demacian intelligence. And its half guilt because Lux peeled his skin back and stared at all the assembled layers of his history as they had been stripped and rearranged into the sort of report she could read in an evening and he’s smart enough to _know_ this.

She doesn’t know what kind of reaction she expects.

“I read yours too,” he says.

“Good. Then you know exactly what I am.”

There’s that ever-present flash of pity in his eyes that sets her temper alight. “Who,” Jarvan corrects gently as if she were a child, “I know who you are.”

 

Luxanna Crownguard of the House Crownguard, daughter of Lillian of the House Crownguard and Marcus of Silverflint and younger sister to Garen Crownguard, commander of the Dauntless Vanguard.

Mage. Magic manifested at the age of eight and shortly thereafter, sent to the Academy at the tender age of eleven.

She doesn’t know what Command wrote after that. Maybe they say that she graduated and now works in the reservist wing. Or in the logistics office. Or maybe her dossier continued on with unvarnished truth: She was hand-picked for the special operations division by Command at the age of thirteen, and tutored under his hand since then. That her first mission came at age fifteen and that she completed it with flying colors, and that at the age of nineteen Command sent her alone into Noxus to retrieve intel from Swain himself. That she’d been an asset in the Freljord and that she’d been an intelligence officer in Ionia. That her escape from Noxus was nothing short of miraculous and that she spent personal time in Piltover.

It doesn’t matter. Lux can summarize her dossier in two statements: Demacia made her into a weapon. She would die for Demacia.

As long as the prince knows that, she doesn’t care what else he knows.

 

The third time Lux reads Jarvan’s dossier is after Kalamanda. He walks in on her. She’s sitting in a tent that’s been set aside for her, the entirety of the dossier spilling around her. Sheets of paper in haphazard but precisely sorted piles. But the answer she’s looking for isn’t there. It isn’t there. Jarvan is.

She doesn't understand why logically because Jarvan is the commander here and Lux is just supplementary assistance, a fail-safe just in case things went south. There are still troops out there in the crater that used to be Kalamanda and Jarvan has better things to do than walk into Lux's tent. But he's here, and so she stares straight at him, eyes the cold of the Conqueror's Sea, and she says: “Tell me what you found beyond the Wall.”

He looks at her, and Lux sees his meadow-green eyes darken first with memory and then with pity, and he looks away.

“Lux,” he says her name with gentleness, more gentleness than has ever been directed to her before in her life she thinks. And then he says, very finally, and very sadly, and almost full of pity, “You will not find the answers you are looking for in my past.”

He leaves before she can tell him to get out.

She understands.

Or at the very least, she thinks she does. She thinks, based on a collection of facts and thoughtful deduction, she understands why he doesn’t tell her. That she's her own person and there's no need to model herself after Jarvan and even if Demacia is not the shining ideal she thought it was as a child, that even if it was not any ideal at all, that she should find her own reasons. Once, Jarvan marched out of Demacia with only twelve men and he crossed the Great Wall and marched further than the deserts of Shurima and whatever he found out there... Whatever he found out there in that wilderness and freedom brought him back to Demacia.

This is what her countrymen say: Their warrior prince went out into the wilderness to hunt monsters and test his own strength. That he returned home only after slaughtering a hundred foul beasts.

Lux did not need to see any report and did not need to read any dossier at all to know that, years ago, Jarvan marched out of Demacia to freedom. That he left without any intent to return. That of those twelve men, some were his friends, and some were his watchers. She knows that only one returned. She understands this; it is not the understanding she seeks, not the _why_ that haunts her, but she understands.

That doesn’t mean she forgives him.

 

There is more, of course. Quiet moments in obscure library sections carved out of ever-shifting and demanding schedules. Shared glances and private amusement at balls that stretch on and on and on. Lux does not catalog these. They are private moments between Lux and Jarvan and, naively, untainted by the going-on of state affairs.

She knows there’s nothing at the end of that road. Command only raises an eyebrow at her once, and says no more on that topic.

 

On a battlefield, far away from home, on the eve of battle before Lux is sent to do something extremely dangerous and probably suicidal, Jarvan asks only once, “Why?”

“For Demacia,” she says.

And he does not look at her. He does not meet her eyes, half-afraid of the truth that he will find there.

_For you._

_For you, for you, and for nothing else._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please partake in my version of extremely self-serving and vague JarvLux.
> 
> And there are confessions and proposals and earnest yearning (and scheming, and duty, and regret, and sacrifice) but at the heart of it is always, Jarvan who looks at Lux and sees himself and Lux who looks at Jarvan and wants to understand him as if understanding him would bring her peace for her decisions. Jarvan who would never guide her in that way, who never wants to be a compass for her, who wants Lux to choose for herself because-
> 
> Because he's the prince and he will be the king and he will use her to within an inch of her life if he has to, beyond that if that's what it takes. But he's a person too and he loves her, yes, but he respects her and her choices and never wants to affect them as a _person_ (because he's never just Jarvan to her, and she's a Crownguard and he's the fucking crown), even if that means watching Lux pick the same path he picked.


End file.
